An easier way to find mental health help for young people: The Youth Mental Health Ecosystem
Why It Matters
A centralized mental health support platform can make it easier for youth to find proper support. It also opens opportunities for organizations to collaborate and extend their reach.
Future of Good has agreed not to include Jessie’s last name due to the sensitive subject matter. This article was produced in partnership with GreenShield. You can read our full editorial standards here.
Jessie’s high school shifted to remote learning during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and it made so many things in her life worse.
At the tender age of 15, the change took a toll on her mental wellbeing and she quickly realized she needed professional support.
“I felt very disconnected from the things that I used to do that made me feel very happy and connected,” Jessie remembers.
“I was definitely feeling really low.”
But five years ago, finding support proved to be overwhelming.
More than 1 million youth in Canada need mental health support, yet nearly 60 per cent are not getting it, according to data from Mental Health Research Canada.
“The first thing I looked up is, where can I learn healthy strategies? And I just got a bunch of advertisements for paid services which were hundreds of dollars,” she said.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way this is something I can do for myself right now.’”
Jessie’s experience mirrors what many young people face, with long wait times, high costs and confusing pathways making it difficult to get support.
Those challenges inspired GreenShield, Canada’s only national non-profit healthcare and insurance organization, to rethink how young people access care.
The organization has unveiled its new pilot Youth Mental Health Ecosystem, a centralized digital platform that provides youth with timely, culturally relevant mental health support.
“Delivering care that respects cultural differences isn’t just a best practice — it’s essential to achieving equitable health outcomes. By tailoring services to diverse needs, we can ensure that every individual feels understood and supported on their health journey,” said Sabrina Ladha, vice president of GreenShield Cares.
The Ecosystem is designed to make access easier and uses lived experiences like Jessie’s to help shape the platform.
“We built the ecosystem over the past year by consulting with community organizations, conducting roundtables with youth nationwide, and analyzing usage data from our post-secondary plan members to ensure our ecosystem meets youth where they are and delivers real impact,” said Ladha.
Only 19 per cent of young people received mental health support last year, according to GreenShield.
Among those who tried, 45 per cent ran into long wait times, 41 per cent said it was hard to find the right kind of support, and more than 50 per cent said cost was a barrier.
Centralized support services
GreenShield’s Ecosystem provides one platform for youth to access care and connect directly with resources designed to address those barriers.
As well as using lived experiences to create the platform, GreenShield also partnered with other leading mental health organizations that provide frontline support.
This integrated approach is built on a model that Jen Crowe has been developing as the Executive Director of Choices for Youth.
“I think that it’s a mistake when we look at these as siloed issues rather than issues that are complementary and can perpetuate each other,” said Crowe, the executive director.
The organization is a non-profit that serves homeless and at-risk youth in St. John’s, Nfld.
The success of their model allowed Choices for Youth to launch Becket, a province-wide, comprehensive integrated youth services hub.
“Ultimately, we’re treating the root cause of what a young person is experiencing rather than just treating the symptom itself,” said Crowe.
Their centralized platform aligns with GreenShield’s goal of breaking down barriers, which is why Crowe’s organization now offers its programs through the Youth Mental Health Ecosystem, helping ensure young people can access the care they need.
“You can address so many of those challenges just with one visit instead of having to spend so much time going from so many different hub sites to so many different service providers in order to get your needs met,” said Crowe.
“We know that that model of fragmentation simply doesn’t work.”
Change for the future
GreenShield’s Youth Mental Health Ecosystem is something Jessie said could have helped her when she was 15.
In addition to piloting the ecosystem, GreenShield offers free mental health support, including counselling and a free one-year digital cognitive behavioural therapy subscription to all Canadians aged 15 to 29 who are a part of equity-seeking groups.
The organization offers a personalized therapist matching tool to let users choose from more than 50 options, including race, gender and sexuality in as little as 24 hours.
“The session would have helped me to kind of access new resources and provide me a more direct path of what my next steps could be,” said Jessie.
“It would have helped me to be more motivated when going on this journey because it took me many tries to kind of reach the point where I’m at now. It wasn’t just a clear path.”
To learn more about GreenShield’s Youth Mental Health Ecosystem, click here.
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